MANGA REVIEW: Time to get schooled

Rosario Vampire_FORMAT

ROSARIO + VAMPIRE: SEASON II VOL. 1 By Akihisa Ikeda  (San Francisco: Viz Media, 2010, 184 pp., $9.99 paperback) School is back in session. “Rosario + Vampire: Season II” is back for its second year. This continuation of the original series starts off with Tsukune Aono returning to Yokai Academy for his second year. All [...]

MANGA REVIEW: A walk on the wild side

Arata_FORMAT

ARATA: THE LEGEND VOL. 1 By Yuu Watase  (San Francisco: Viz Media, 2010, 208 pp., $9.99 paperback) Yuu Watase, the acclaimed author of other manga series such as “Fushigi Yuugi” and “Ayashi no Ceres,” is no stranger to fantasy settings, but “Arata: The Legend” serves as her first foray into comics for boys. In “Arata,” [...]

MANGA REVIEW: A collection from the legend

Drunken Dream

A DRUNKEN DREAM AND OTHER STORIES By Moto Hagio (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2010, 288 pp., $24.99, hardcover) Moto Hagio is certainly one of the world’s leading artists when it comes to shoujo manga (comics for and about girls). Born in 1949, she is one of “the magnificent forty-niners,” a group of shoujo manga artists that [...]

State of the Industry A Q & A with Fred Schodt on the end of the anime and manga boom

ASTRONOMICAL — Fred Schodt with Astro Boy, the subject of his recent book of essays.   photo courtesy of Fred Schodt

Fred Schodt is a well-known expert on Japanese popular culture. He was one of the first to write about manga in English, and was Osamu Tezuka’s personal translator for both the man and his comics. His first book, “Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics,” was published in 1983, and is still an invaluable resource [...]

JASON SHIGA: Interview with a Crazy Genius

MIND-BOGGLING — Jason Shiga’s “Meanwhile,” an experimentalist comic book, can be read in all different directions. ©Jason Shiga

“Crazy + Genuis = Shiga,” wrote Scott McCloud, considered by many to be the foremost authority on comics. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to argue that those two words do not apply to Jason Shiga. A favorite in the indie comics scene for more than a decade, Shiga won renown for his dark humor [...]

Cosplay, transcending the fourth wall and more

cosplay

With the rising popularity of anime and the subsequent rise in popularity at such anime conventions as Anime Expo and Fanime Con in California, the practice of cosplay became a largely popular activity among fans. Cosplay, a contraction of the words “costume” and “play” is a fan-activity where people dress up as characters from anime, [...]

‘One Piece’ Manga Enjoys Unprecedented Popularity

MANGA MANIA — Copies of the latest volume of the manga comic titled “One Piece” are put on sale Dec. 4 at Forest in Kinokuniya bookstore’s main office in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.  Kyodo News photo

TOKYO — The popularity of a manga comic titled “One Piece” remains unceasing with the circulation of the latest 56th volume put on sale this month totaling 2.85 million copies, marking the highest number for a first printing in the history of comic publications. The figure brought the total circulation of “One Piece” (featuring a [...]

‘Astro Boy’ Falls Short of Tezuka’s Trademark Storytelling Style

UP, UP AND AWAY — Astro Boy test his powers in the new animated film, “Astro Boy.” © 2009 Imagi Crystal Limited and Summit Entertainment, LLC. Original Manga © Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.

This past month, Astro Boy, one of Japan’s greatest icons, made his debut in U.S. movie theaters. The new film,  appropriately titled “Astro Boy,” is directed by British animator David Bowers (“Flushed Away”) and produced by Hong Kong’s Imagi Studios’ (the CGI-animated “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”) — with some oversight by Tezuka Productions, the company [...]